A 27-year-old Russian tried to hack Tesla

Entering the United States on a tourist visa, he tried to bribe an employee of Elon Musk's company to steal data. But Elon Musk, Tesla boss (photo: Getty), was denounced and arrested

A 27-year-old Russian offered a million dollars to a Tesla employee to hack the Gigafactory networks in Nevada and demand a ransom of four million to Elon Musk, under penalty of online publication of all the exfiltrated data. A real spy story, which began with a message sent to the employee on WhatsApp and continued with meetings in Reno, trips to the lake, dinners, drunkards and secret conversations in rented cars. Eventually the 27-year-old Russian, who entered the United States on a tourist visa, was arrested last weekend and detained on the orders of the prosecutor.

The affair has been monitored by the FBI ever since the employee, a Non-American citizen, who speaks Russian and had access to the electric car maker's computer network, became suspicious and alerted the company, which then contacted the feds. The "business" meetings between the two began after a harmless group trip to Lake Tahoe (pleasant context of the villa of Il Padrino, ed.), Where the 27-year-old Russian, who entered the United States with a tourist visa but actually an emissary of a group of conspirators behind him, avoided appearing in group photos.